


Dixon

by DomesticatedTendencies



Series: Thinking Out Loud [3]
Category: The Walking Dead & Related Fandoms, The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Zombie Apocalypse, Character Study, Daryl Dixon & Beth Greene Friendship, F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Underage Drinking, Merle’s Shadow, POV Daryl Dixon, Takes Place In A Burger Joint, Underage Drinking, buying beer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-05
Updated: 2017-11-05
Packaged: 2019-01-16 22:28:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12351825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DomesticatedTendencies/pseuds/DomesticatedTendencies
Summary: A young Beth Greene asks the resident town outsider Daryl Dixon, to buy her and her friends beer.Part of the Thinking Out Loud series.





	Dixon

Keep his head down and his nose clean, that’s what Rick Grimes had told him to do, and on very short list of friends Daryl Dixon counted the sheriff’s deputy as one. Rick had let him crash on his couch for over a month when he couldn't make rent and had helped him find a job when no one wanted to hire him cause of his last name. He had even called in a few favors and got Daryl set up in a studio apartment near the outskirts of town that he could afford on his small salary. He knew he didn't have to do none of it, it was just the kind of guy Rick was. He liked helping people. It was just strange to say you were buddies with the guy who put your brother away.

Daryl was doing alright. Not great, but he couldn't complain neither. He worked in the storeroom at The Great Outdoors Sporting Goods, unloading the trucks and moving merchandise. The job was shit but it was enough to keep a roof over his head. Plus they gave him a decent discount on ammo. His truck ran most days and when it didn't it was usually something he could fix easy enough. He got time on the weekends to hunt which he liked and had even gotten himself a library card. He hadn't had one since back in high school when Merle and their old man had poked fun at him for trying to read anything that didn't have nudy pictures in it. It wasn't like he was some great scholar or nothing, but Daryl liked to know shit. When the truck acted up and he didn't know why, he could look up the problem in a Chilton’s Manual and late at night when he was bored without a TV he could read about the Indians and how it was back when; folklore and shit. Merle never got it but Daryl didn't care anymore. He was doing alright on his own and if he was lucky at the end of the week he had enough money after rent and bills to get himself a carton of smokes and a cheap meal down at the burger joint on Main. The food was crap but he liked their chocolate shakes.

After Merle had got himself locked up, this time for five to seven years, Daryl had thought he was screwed. The hell was he supposed to do for that long without his big brother around? He depended on him, always had. Except for when he had run off when Daryl was a kid, Merle had always been there to tell his baby brother what was what and Daryl had needed that. He liked knowing someone had his back, especially when shit got bad like it always was. The world was ugly. But Merle was upstate now and Daryl was on his own, so he figured he best get right with the idea that you can't always depend on someone else. You can't depend on no one for nothing.

It was Friday night and instead of running around raising Cain and chasing women, Daryl was eating alone at The Burger Shack. He'd learn a thing or two in the last six months, like that the drinking buddies he’d had before had been more Merle’s buddies than his own. He didn't really mind though. He wasn't after getting high anymore and not only were cheap women and booze expensive, but he’d never had much luck with either. He'd eat his burger and fries, suck down his chocolate shake and go home, alone, and get some sleep. Tomorrow he’d get an early start and do some hunting. Stock his freezer with enough meat to get him through for a while. Groceries were another thing that was expensive and he preferred his meat fresh anyhow.

A loud group of kids came in when he was about halfway through his supper. Obnoxious little shits acting like they knew shit when they didn't. He recognized one of them though. Blonde girl; the hell was her name? She worked the register at the store a few days a week for bubblegum money. Made fifty cents an hour more than he did all ‘cause she had a pretty smile and was always nice to the goddamn customers. Hell, she was nice to everybody. She was even nice to Daryl and he was jackass most of the time. She gave him a little wave when she saw him sitting there alone, acting like they were old friends or something. He barely gave her a nod of acknowledgement. The hell was her name, again? Beth. Beth Greene. Said so on the tag she wore pinned to her apron at work.

Her and her friends ordered their food at the counter before taking up at a table across the restaurant. There was eight of them, an even split between guys and girls. You could tell who was hooking up by the way they were ogling each other. Dumbass kids with their hormones. Daryl watched as one of the boys, a scrawny kid who probably hadn't even sprouted his first chest hair yet, gave Beth’s rump a pinch beneath her dress skirt. She cried out and slapped his hand away, then they both laughed about it like the dumb kids they were. Daryl went back to eating his supper and ignoring them.

But not five minutes later he could feel the hairs stand up on the back of his neck. He looked up, his mouth full and his jaw working, to find three of the little shits whip back around like they hadn't just been looking at him. The blonde girl, Beth, sat angled so that he could see her face and he saw her cheeks go a brilliant red as she tried to look innocent. Shit, ‘cause that didn't make him paranoid or nothing.

It wasn't like he wasn't used to it - the goddamn looks and hushed whispers. He'd learned to ignore it back when he was a kid and he'd go to school sporting a fresh shiner from his old man. It wasn't like it mattered to him none. Who gave a damn what people thought anyway? Thing was, the whispers got worse after Merle and his dumb shit; people thinking Daryl was no different then his older brother. And maybe they were right, maybe it was just a matter of time before Daryl went and did something dumb himself, but in the meantime he didn't need a bunch of goddamn kids looking at him sideways and casting judgement.

He was bent over his food, wiping up the last of the ketchup with a fry when he caught movement out of the corner of his eye. The scrawny kid was nudging goldilocks out of the booth. She was skittish as all get-out, looking like a deer that knew a hunter was in the woods on the first day of buck season. Scared. And he watched her with narrowed eyes as she made her way towards him.

“Hey.” She had her hands clasped behind her back and was rubbing her lips together, unsure and too goddamn innocent. “How's it goin’?”

Daryl looked past her to her snickering friends. “What’chu want?”

Her big blue eyes went wide at his gruffness. “Nothin’! Just saw you sitting by yourself and thought I'd say hi.”

“Hi,” He drawled.

“Hi,” She sounded like a goddamn echo. Looking to the empty side of the table across from him, she bit her lip. “Mind if I sit?”

The hell did he care what she did? He shrugged and she slid in to the booth, the vinyl seat whispering under her bare thighs. People were looking now, not just her friends. No doubt wondering just what the hell she was doing. Shit, just what he needed. She was maybe fifteen years old and she seemed oblivious to the fact that she shouldn't have been talking to him let alone sitting.

“So are you all by yourself tonight?” She asked, again skittish though she didn't exactly sound afraid.

His eyes twitched. He knew it was some kind of joke. Some sort of dumb kid game. He was just slow on the uptake and that damn sweetness in her voice was jarring.

“What do you want, girl?”

“Beth.” Her eyes dropped as she tucked a golden lock behind her ear. “My name’s Beth.”

He knew that, he just didn't care. “Whatever. What do you want?”

She tossed a timid look over her shoulder at her friends, then turned back. She wouldn't look at him, instead focusing her attention on a scratch in the tabletop. She poked at it with her finger, seeing if she could rub it away.

“My uh, my friends want me to see if you’d buy us some beer.” She barely spoke in a whisper.

He let out a snort. “Your friends, huh?”

  
Her cheeks flushed with shame though he couldn't understand why. It wasn't like she was the first to ever ask. Hell, back when he was her age he'd wait outside the liquor store asking every Tom, Dick, or Harry until someone finally caved. Used to tell them his old man had sent him down. Half the time it had been the truth.

She looked like her skin itched; all uncomfortable and fidgety in her seat. She didn't say nothing. Probably didn't know how to answer his gruffness. With her brow all wrinkled, she pushed against the table as though to leave.

“How old are you, anyway?” He asked, causing her to stop.

“Does it matter?” She retorted. Then looking up at him with what he supposed to be the bluest of blue eyes, she answered, “I'll be seventeen next month. The eighth.” She added the last part like it made a difference to him.

He smirked like he could have guessed. “Sixteen, huh? And you want me to buy beer for you and your friends?”

“No,” She answered, then quickly, “Yes.”

“Can'tcha make up your mind, girl?” He gruffed.

She shot him a dirty look. “I told you, boy, my friends are the ones who want the beer.”

Damn. Such venom from a pretty little mouth. He never would have thought she had it in her.

“You're friends, huh?” He asked. “Not you?”

“No,” She told him plainly. “I don't drink.”

“You don't?”

“Nope,” She said it so her lips popped on the P.

He glared at her and her perfect pink lips, feeling like a creep for even noticing them.

“Then what’chu asking for?”

She sighed, “My friends.”

He looked to the overcrowded table and the scrawny kid who was shooting arrows at him with his eyes. Daryl smirked, “Right.”

“Just say no already,” She said in a hushed way, like she was telling him some kind of secret.

“Hold up now. What makes you think I’m gunna say no?”

He was toying with her, purposely, though he couldn't exactly say why. Maybe because he was an asshole or maybe it was because she was the first person in a while to talk to him straight. Besides Rick no one really approached him unless it was necessary. Like he had some kind of catching disease or something. Like being a Dixon was contagious.

Slowly, Beth looked up from her hands folded in her lap. “Well, aren’t you?”

He thought on it for a minute. If Merle were around he would have been a sleaze about it. Cute little girl asking for booze; he'd probably have said he do it for a kiss or something. Paw at her a bit, see how far she'd let him go; talk nasty so he could laugh at the way it made her squirm. That’s what Merle would do while Rick, hell, she wouldn't even have approached Rick. And if she had there would be no way he’d have approved. Shit, he'd probably give a 20 minute lecture on the dangers of underage drinking. Talk about goddamn statistics or something. Probably drag her and all her friends home by the ear and make them tell their parents what they'd been up to.

Daryl took a different approach.

“The hell you asking me for if you don't really want it?”

“I told you already, my friends.”

He gave her a look like he wasn't buying the bull she was trying to sell.

She looked embarrassed; like really embarrassed and not just like she was putting it on. She chewed her lip a bit, her blue eyes a little glassy.

“My daddy's an alcoholic. Was. Still is, I guess. They say once you are one you’ll always be one. Anyway, he’s always going on about not drinking and how upset he’d be if I ever started up. I guess I've always been afraid of disappointing him. Usually I'm the one driving so I just tell everyone it's because of that but tonight Jimmy picked me up.” Her shoulders sagged a little as Daryl’s eyes flicked to the scrawny kid with the shifty eyes. “They don't know…” She whispered.

“Don't know about your daddy or don't know that you don’t wanna drink?” He graveled.

She looked up at him again from across the table. Again with those baby blue eyes. Like a goddamn animal he could smell her, all fruity sweetness and a little spice mingling with the greasy remains of his dinner.

“Both,” She said softly. “Please Mr. Dixon, just say no so we can be done with it.”

Mr. Dixon? She really was young, and naive too by the looks of it. Like she really believed if he didn't buy her friends booze that would be the end of it. Like they wouldn't find someone else to get them what they wanted. He didn't know why he found himself feeling bad for her. She was just some kid he didn't really know. Except she had those barely there tears in her eyes, the ones he somehow knew she couldn't fake, and he felt sorry for her.

He took a slow breath, his mouth tight. “Just ‘cause I don't buy it for ‘em don't mean someone else won't,” He said it as a warning. “You got another way home?”

Her golden head bobbed in a nod. “I can call my sister.”

“Do that.”

“I will,” She made it sound like a promise.

He flicked another look towards her friends, each of them looking jittery with anticipation.

“Git the hell out of here,” He bit out, the harshness reminiscent of his old man. “I ain't buying beer for no goddamn kids.”

Her eyes flashed wide and she gave a little gasp. Then she blinked, once, twice, and her cheek twitched in a suppressed smile.

“Thanks,” She said it not so that he heard it but rather read it on her lips as she slid from the booth.

He dipped his head, not giving a damn that people were staring. Let them think he was an asshole, he didn't care. For once in his life he had done the right thing. He had acted like a man and not like his brother’s bitch.

Daryl sat back in his booth and watched the girl, his eyes nothing but two icy slits. There was a red crease across the back of her thighs from where they had stuck to the vinyl seat and she tucked her blonde hair behind her ear as she returned to her friends. He watched as she shrugged her shoulders, shook her head, and the disappointment on the faces of her friends.

Good, he thought. Let them get used to it. Life was full of disappointment. And he took one last drag off his chocolate shake.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed it. As always, I love comments and kudos because, we’ll, who doesn’t?


End file.
